


Scorched earth and fire-fallow fields

by Etalice



Series: Drarryland 2019 [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: An overabundance of fire metaphors, And sharing all their feels, Light Angst, M/M, Making difficult choices, Two sad boys in the astronomy tower, and kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 14:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etalice/pseuds/Etalice
Summary: “You ever feel like you’ve lost yourself in everything others want you to be?” he whispers instead of turning into a funeral pyre.Harry covers Draco’s fingers with a warm palm at that and says he does, oh god he does, all the time. (Draco catches fire all the same.)What if Draco had had second thoughts about killing Dumbledore? What if he'd found a way to share them with Harry?





	Scorched earth and fire-fallow fields

**Author's Note:**

> _The Fates have spoken. You have drawn the Tower card, reversed. You will write about disaster avoided, delaying disaster, and the fear of suffering. Because this card is ruled by Mars, the god of war, your story should take place during the War and will channel the element of fire. You may read the full description of the card here for more inspiration. The powers that be foresee a word count no higher than 875, and always an odd number._
> 
> The very wonderful [Ruth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfwish) has once again wrangled all my commas into submission with unparalleled patience and enthusiasm.

Later, much later, Draco will still think about everything that could have gone wrong and all that could have been different. Later, much later, he’ll still wake Harry sleeping beside him (eyes veiled and tongue heavy with sleep). Harry will always squeeze his hand and whisper soft words ( _it’s okay_ and _we’re alive_ and _sleep, darling, sleep_ ), but Draco won’t sleep. He’ll let his fingers rise and fall with the tides of breath in Harry’s chest, and he’ll count Harry’s eyelashes in the dim light of dawn, and he’ll let gratitude bloom like night jasmine or evening primrose behind his ribs.

***

Gratitude is the furthest thing away from Draco’s mind when it all happens. He’s at the top of the astronomy tower then, and his lungs keep collapsing with the reality of the responsibilities hanging upon his head like a crown (like a sword, glistening and sharp and ready to fall).

He’s never questioned his family, Draco Malfoy. There’s always been safety in that word, when it was Mother and Father and him. There’s always been power in that name, as he let it wind around the bones of his spine, straightening his back and lifting his jaw. He’s never questioned his family, until it was Mother and Father and a madman, until he was tasked with murder, and the thought followed him everywhere like dead doves, staining all his robes with the copper-red scent of blood.

He’s never questioned his family, Draco Malfoy, and he’s not entirely sure he’s ready to now, because he let himself grow into that name, contorting himself into all the right shapes until he was the Malfoy Heir, and Father’s firstborn son, and Mother’s only child, and not Draco—not really Draco anymore.

So he just sits, and he watches the moon dance through the sky in a gracious curvature. (So he just sits, and lets the vines of doubt wind around his organs.)

He doesn’t hear the footsteps treading softly up the stairs, and he doesn’t hear the soft sound of air leaving someone’s lungs at the sight of him. And then: there’s a soft weight next to him, and a soft breath mingling with his own in the cool night sky. He doesn’t even turn his head. He knows it’s Potter because the air smells like broom polish and treacle tart and grass.

They don’t talk. Draco knows it’ll only end in a fight, and he can’t find the strength for that, not anymore, not when his spine is slowly dissolving underneath his flesh, and the vines inside his chest are rupturing his spleen and puncturing his lungs. Instead: they breathe. They breathe, and they stare at the moon, and they let their bodies be still as stones underneath the star-speckled sky. It soothes Draco, Potter’s breath, the slow, soft rhythm of it, the steady motion of its

ins

       and

                       outs.

He turns, half hypnotised, and sinks into green eyes, endless and ocean-deep as Harry stares back at him, every emotion written on his beautiful face (sadness, and apathy, and something else entirely, a burning sense of longing). Draco is quite certain he’ll catch fire with the way it resonates inside his chest.

“You ever feel like you’ve lost yourself in everything others want you to be?” he whispers instead of turning into a funeral pyre.

Harry covers Draco’s fingers with a warm palm at that and says he does, oh god he does, all the time. (Draco catches fire all the same.)

Through the conversation that follows, Draco burns, and burns, and burns. He’s a forest fire, blazing fiercer with every word that falls from his tongue. He turns every thought of family into scorched earth as Harry tells him about growing up a hero and a sacrifice all in one in broken sentences and a pumice-rough voice.

When they kiss, delirious with shared secrets and with the unbearable heaviness of war, Draco lets lava flow through his veins, viscous and white-hot until he’s every natural disaster at once, and not a Malfoy anymore. It’s just before sunrise, then, and one kiss turns into two, and three, and four, until their hearts are heavy and swollen in their chests, until the soft strokes of fingers on skin and hair turn their flesh into fire-fallow fields, born anew and fertile. As they hold each other in the bright-crisp light of dawn, life germinates in the rich soil of their blood, and the rising sun above the horizon speaks in promises of a new path open before them, of doing the right things, the hard things, the brave things.

Of never letting go.


End file.
